Here come the BatMEN in November

Bruce Wayne’s return to the here and now isn’t about to bump current Batman Dick Grayson back to Nightwing status anytime soon. The New York Post confirms we’ll have TWO Batmans (as in Batmen) come November.

“Bruce Wayne realizes that he can’t just be the grim avenger he was before,” DC publisher Dan DiDio tells the Post. “He wants to be more aggressive in his reach, and realizes the change that Batman as a symbol can effect around the world.”

Get ready for the franchising the Dark Knight, the next daring but logical step in the modern Batman era.

With November’s “Batman, Inc.,” writer Grant Morrison adds another bold chapter to his ongoing ode to Batman by in essence setting the groundwork for what Mark Waid and Alex Ross flirted with in “Kingdom Come” and Frank Miller explored in “The Dark Knight Returns” — namely Bruce overseeing an army of Dark Knights that extends the “brand” of Batman well beyond a single alleyway in Gotham City.

It’s a daring but logical progression for the character. As DiDio tells the Post, Wayne is merely exploring a more global view to his alter ego given his vast financial resources, though no doubt Bruce’s hopscotching through time in Morrison’s “Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne” has also made Bruce very aware of just how mighty a symbol Batman is in any era, much less any corner of Gotham.

Morrison has already showed how this dynamic can work outside of Gotham with recent appearances of Knight and Squire, basically the Batman and Robin of London, in his “Batman” and “Batman and Robin” stories. And enough of us must dig the British Dynamic Duo too because we’re due for a “Knight and Squire” miniseries that starts in October.

But at the heart of this Batman franchising stands the original and the obvious heir apparent. As DC’s The Source blog explains, starting in November “Detective Comics,” “Batman” and “Batman and Robin” will feature Grayson as Batman and Bruce’s son Damian as Robin, while Wayne will handle Bat-business in “Batman Inc.” and writer/artist David Finch’s “Batman: The Dark Knight.”

And don’t worry which Batman is which. Grayson will rock his current black-bat logo costume while Wayne brings back the yellow oval bat logo to his garb. Which just goes to show you really can have a classic Batman and a Batman 2.0 coexist without any multiverse shenanigans.